Etsy Shop for polkaostrich

Excitement and Adventure

Fri, 25 Dec 2009 17:37:52 -0500

$12.00
Interested in Depression-era gangsters? There a ton of books out there about gangsters, but none where you can look through the archives of fingerprints, hilarious ransom notes, wanted posters and rap sheets. 11 envelopes are stuffed with primary sources about individual gangsters, and includes 2 trading cards (each zine gets different cards).

Also includes: an extensive timeline and bibliography, an awards ceremony, lexicon, and lots of cool information.

If you like history, Depression-era crime, Robin Hood-type bandits, archives, St. Paul, gangsters, or interactive things, this is the zine for you.

40 pages, 8 1/2"x 5.5", hand bound, typewritten (that's a typewriter!),photocopied, card stock cover, and made with love, with envelopes glued in and filled with gangsters.

Here's a review from Lower East Side Librarian:

"Excitement and Adventure is such a librarian zine! It's basically a fanzine about prohibition era gangsters, which Lacey researched with abandon at the Minnesota Historical Society. They have a page on their website about Gangsters in St. Paul!

You can tell she has a total crush on all the gangsters, despite her disclaimer that, "While I'm not romanticizing killing or kidnapping, which happened a lot, there's something about gangsters taking money from banks that were taking people's money that makes me happy." She goes on to say, "I love the gangster era because of the cars, the clothes, the hairstyles, the handwriting, the motivation & cockiness, & the blatant disregard for the law & authorities."

But what's so librarian about the zine, you ask? Each gangster's story is told in primary sources with a photocopy of his or her wanted file. She also includes copies of actual ransom notes that are ridiculously funny, many of which end with official sounding language:

I HEREBY AUTHORIZE THE ABOVE PAYMENT TO BE MADE AND REQUEST THAT ALL INSTRUCTIONS BE FULLY CARRIED OUT.

There is a 17 page timeline taking the reader from 1900 to Alvin "Creepy" Karpis's death in 1979, classified ads, awards, a glossary, a bibliography, and two gangster trading cards (collect the whole set).

It's also kind of fancy visually, with a cardstock cover, stab bound, and envelopes sealing each gangster's history. "

Likes/Dislikes zine

Fri, 25 Dec 2009 17:26:05 -0500

$2.00
Microcosm Publishing describes it best:

24 pages, 1/2 size, copied, typewritten (2 oz)

A great little slice of personality into Lacey's life via her extensive lists of likes and dislikes. Some highlights include:

Likes:

"The thought that Aliens and Humans might someday become one."

"What Illegal things arose out of prohibition"

"talking about conspiracies"

Dislikes:

"Having to break into a place you have the key to."

"Realizing you like your boyfriend's friends more than you like him"

"Playing with silly putty after someone with warts"

"Undressing a man only to find he has creepy underwear"

With things like this, we get a gradual growing depth into what Lacey is all about and even her seeming contradictions. We smile at shared feeling and cringe at a horrible experience we haven't yet lived through.

"This is a list zine. I love list zines. I don't know of very many of them but I am always excited to get a new one. This one is done by a girl named Lacey. It is a very interesting list. My favorite part of it is that you feel like you are really getting to know the person deeply without really knowing anything anything about her at all. Brilliant. She should get some kind of award." matthew bodette

Woven mat recycled blank journal

Fri, 25 Dec 2009 17:25:52 -0500

$3.50
Everyone needs a blank journal. This features a picture of a woven mat with dotted lines. The inside cover is white. I found this paper and hand-bound in some colored paper. Very chic.

Plus you can reduce your carbon footprint with this journal, as it is made entirely from materials that were salvaged. Hand bound with bookbinding thread. 4x5"
With 64 pink, green, yellow and blue pages.

Fake watch recycled blank journal

Fri, 25 Dec 2009 17:25:52 -0500

$3.50
Everyone needs a blank journal. This features a fake watches that if you are so inclined, you can cut on the dotted line and have a face-less watch.Inside cover is black-ish. I found this paper and hand-bound in some colored paper. Very chic.

Plus you can reduce your carbon footprint with this journal, as it is made entirely from materials that were salvaged. Hand bound with bookbinding thread. 4x5"
With 64 pink, green, yellow and blue pages.

Very True zine

Fri, 25 Dec 2009 17:25:52 -0500

$5.00
Hand bound, typewritten City-Lights-sized poetry chapbook of poetry that will knock your socks off! Not cheesy, but racy sassy poems about love, life and losing.
Hand block-printed cover of an ostrich.

Broken Pencil (Amy Greenwood, Issue 40) says:
The black Bristol board cover is adourned with an ostrich stamped in hot pink paint. Its spine is bound in a fine, waxed red string. The craftsmanship of Very True is precisely why I love zines: creativity aside, the cover serves as a reminder of just how deceiving these little guys can be. When I initially saw the zine, it reminded me of something you'd see printed on an American Eagle T-shirt. I couldn't help but think of it as another attempt for artificiality or poseurdom to rear its ugly head. Fortunately, I was wrong. Very True is actually a collection of poetry and random strings of thought written by Lacey Hedtke. Short and highly provocative, the compositions would make for a rousing evening of spoken word, considering the wide range of topics she writes on. Here's a taster:

People are so worried. They don't know how to interpret goodness anymore.
When someone's giving you their body
Know how to handle it.

My boss,
A married man
Grabbed my ass at work
In front of his mother

Does deja vu have anything to do w/ symmetry

Laying in bed
reading the Communist Manifesto
(the reason for your pa's imprisonment)
W/you
Sleeping all our time away
Is not my idea of a wild time.

This zine serves as an anthology of sorts--adages and assertions borne out of Hedtke's introspection of her life experiences. And the presentation is just as revealing as the words: three pieces lay scattered on each page and are written in old type. The aged font and disturbed page layout suggests that Hedtke was as much at odds with her emotions at the keyboard as when she first experienced the events. The writing is fresh, but the memories, wounds and opinions are not. There's a lot of reflection packed in these pages and it's such a revitalizing read. A real gem.

Cereal Boxes and Milk Crates Zine Libraries and Infoshops are NOW zine

Fri, 25 Dec 2009 17:25:52 -0500

$3.00
A zine detailing the ins and outs of zine librarianship, with an extensive bibliography for your own reading, and a loooonnng resource list of zine libraries in North America and Europe.
Hand bound with different colored paper for fun fun fun.
Want to know how a zine library runs, how things are organized, what an infoshop is, and how people pay for it?
I made this zine for a library conference in Croatia. It's a good introduction if you like zines, libraries, or are a librarian.
Plus there's a centerfold.

Britney Toxic Zine

Sat, 17 Oct 2009 11:58:47 -0400

$3.00
Britney Britney Britney.
15 hand drawn Britney portraits with collaged headlines ripped from the tabloids.
You know you love/hate Britney, get this piece of pop culture now while she's still hot.
A collaboration with the ubiquitous art genius Scott Seekins.

Gold Gocco hand-screenprinted cover.
Staple-bound. Photocopied. 4x5"-ish
16 pgs

Rhubarbarism says:
Britney Spears may not be much of a pop icon anymore, but something in the story of her public rise and fall resonates with local artist Scott Seekins (you know him) who, perhaps as someone experienced in the creation and maintenance of his own image, has come to identify with Spears. In fact, a painting of a fantasy marriage between the two hangs at the top of my stairs and frightens the shit out of me every time I go to the second floor of my house.

This zine is a collaboration between Seekins and my friend Lacey who runs the Polka Ostrich zine empire. The sketches, mostly by Seekins if I'm not wrong, are accompanied by cut and paste titles describing her condition at the time. The zine is worth picking up for the strangely empty sketches of Spears by Seekins, whose work is rarely seen outside art galleries, but the zine's most interesting characteristics can be found in the ideas backing up Spear's depictions.

It seems to be in chronological order, charting her fall from perfect and pure (remember the virginity thing?) to self-hating tabloid example of what not to do. Although I'm sure there's already websites devoted to her life, these drawings do a good job representing the public's generic perception of her in each stage, molded by the same tabloids that brought her fame. [Cont. after video]

A Brittney zine could be written in endless angles: the exploitative side of the fame machine, the strange cultural obsession with teenage girls and disgust with grown women, or ruminations on mental illness. Toxic doesn't reject any of these, in fact maybe it embraces them, taking up the banner of that "Leave Brittney alone" kid on YouTube.

I hate to say it, because it's so obvious, but Brittney has always been marketed and loved as a symbol. She represented the hypersexualized virginal Barbie Americana with all its lack of complication. It was all marketing, but it'd be foolish to think it wasn't an ideal that attracts a lot of people. In a strange way, Toxic laments the loss of this innocence. It takes its activism seriously, even ending with a drawing of old Brittney alongside the battle-cry, "Let's go save her," which, in a way, I guess, is kind of sweet.

Likes/Dislikes 2

Mon, 31 Aug 2009 01:03:44 -0400

$3.00
Another list zine! This was three years in the making. A whopping 16 pages of my most recent likes and dislikes.
Two, two, two zines in one! Likes on one side, turn it upside down and you've got a whole new perspective of Dislikes.

Staple-bound, photocopied pages and cardstock cover featuring adorable frogs and vintage typeface.

10"x4.25"